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The Educational Value Of Virtual Reality

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“I Have a Question!”: The Educational Value of Virtual Reality Since the 1950’s, virtual reality (VR) has been hovering on the periphery of technology without achieving accepted mainstream application or commercial adoption. However, that is beginning to change and virtual reality has become a popular topic within the latest technological headlines. According to TechCrunch, VR startups have raised more than $1.46 billion in venture capital, and people believe that this is the year that VR will finally take off. Virtual reality provides an escape from reality through a “portal” to an alternate reality with a landscape that feels realistic. As VR becomes more popular, some educators and employers are looking to incorporate VR as a primary teaching tool due to its widespread and numerous uses. However, while virtual reality may seem like a beneficial educational tool, problems will inevitably arise from the development and implementation of VR in education, and a middle ground will need to be discovered.
While statistics on VR use in K-12 schools and colleges have yet to be gathered, the steady growth of the market is reflected in the surge of companies solely dedicated to providing K-12 schools with “packaged educational curriculum, content, teacher training and technological tools” to support VR-based instruction in classrooms around the world. However, this is not the first time that this concept had existed. On one hand, it is important to keep in mind that there are

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